I imagine that Steven Soderbergh must be shaking
his head in utter dismay right now, at least if he’s watching
the new teen scare fare Swimfan. After all, our favorite
chrome-domed director not only gave stars Bradford
and Christensen their first big breaks—in King of
the Hill and Traffic, respectively—but also their
most critically-acclaimed roles to date. In return, he gets
to watch them throw away their bright careers on a pitiful
high school rendition of Fatal Attraction.

Barely falling into the category of so-bad-it’s-good, Swimfan
stars Bradford as high school swimming champion Ben Cronin,
who strikes the fancy of new girl Madison Bell (Christensen).
The two make googly eyes at each other, but Ben tells her
it can’t go any further than that; after all, his goody-goody
girlfriend Amy (Appleby) is so devoted, she’s willing
to give up her college plans just to be with him.

And while it comes as a complete shocker that a horny high
school kid would ever even consider cheating on his
straight-laced girlfriend, that is precisely what our breast-stroking
boy toy does. Seduced by Madison’s suggestion of a late night
poolside rendezvous, the two teens get down and dirty, bobbing
more ferociously than those cheap buoys used to separate the
lanes. While this scene certainly doesn’t make swimming pool
sex sessions look especially appealing, Madison’s admission
that she can’t swim supplies you with a rather good idea of
how the film will end—imagine if Fatal Attraction’s
Glenn Close had uttered the line, “I can’t deflect bullets.”

But Ben is essentially a good boy, and decides to brush off
Madison’s advances from here on out, mostly because he feels
guilty about betraying his perfect—i.e. perfectly boring—lady
love (either that, or he just doesn’t go for the weirdo stalker
types. You decide). This doesn’t set well with the flaxen-haired
femme fatale, prompting her to send nude pictures of herself
to Ben, a fate most men would not consider so tragic. However,
Madison doesn’t stop there; first she inundates her aloof
amour with phone calls, pages, and e-mail, until deciding
that wrecking his life is a far better option, and a much
more attention-getting one at that.

There’s not a lot of motivation behind the Madison character;
it’s hastily explained that the love of her life is lingering
in a coma, which oh-so-reasonably prompts her to become a
nymphomaniacal murderess—guess there’s no better way to win
a man’s love than by fucking and killing all of his closest
friends. Christensen does a good enough job with her wild-eyed
rants, but that only carries an actress so far, especially
when working with a script that appears to have been written
by a gaggle of mildly retarded monkeys.

Bradford, on the other hand, is as bland as always, employing
his perpetually reliable half sneer in an effort to show irritation,
surprise, fear, and anger. To be perfectly honest, he’s like
the cinematic equivalent of Andrew Shue, a mono-emotioned
pretty boy whose career—if there is in fact any justice in
the world—will end soon, thereby putting audiences out of
their misery and eliminating the slight chance that there
could ever be a Clockstoppers 2.

Directed by Polson, Swimfan does have moments
of wit, but they’re few and far between. I’m not sure the
film is even capable of achieving the kind of quasi-cult status
of Urban Legends; it says a lot that it exceeds even
that uninspiring cinematic experience in pure banality. The
best thing that can be said about Swimfan is that at
a mere 82 minutes, it manages to register more as a mild irritation
than an insufferable outing.